Touring the interface

- If you're using Microsoft Word on Windowsfor the very first time, you should take a minuteto get familiar with a few key componentsof the application interface.The interface is very similar to many currentand recent versions of Word on other platforms,so if you've used a different version of Wordthere should be some very familiar elements.I'm going to start by launching Word.So I'll go into the Start menu.And you don't have Word pinned to your taskbaror your Start menu, you can go to All apps,scroll down to Word, click on it to launch it.

So this is the Welcome screen and you have some optionsfor opening existing documentsor starting a new document.Now I can open something from my list of Recent fileswhich is right here on the left,or I could start with a template over here on the right.I can choose the Blank template to start writinga new blank document,or I could choose one of the other templatesas a starting point.Now we're going to talk more about creating new documentsand working with templates later.For now, I want to click on Open Other Documents.

And this takes me to a screen that's calledthe Backstage view.Backstage is where you can open, save, and close filesas well as some other important controls.At this point, I don't have access to all of the toolsover here on the left side,but that's only because I don't have a document open yet.We'll see more of these options when we actually havea document open.If you click on New, you have the same optionsto create a new document from a template,which we saw a minute agoand which we'll talk more about in another movie.

If we go to Open, of course this is where you can goto open an existing file.If you use an Office 365 account, you may want to go downto this button that says Account.And you want to make sure that you're signed inand that Office is activated.Now this may already be signed into your accountwhen you install Office.But I can see that I'm not signed in here.So I want to make sure I sign in,so I'm going to click on thatand I'll type in the email address and passwordassociated with my Office 365 account.I'll hit Next and then I'll type in the Password,and I'll hit Sign In.

Signing in to my 365 account will give me accessto all of the online features of Wordincluding cloud storage with OneDrive.Finally, there's an Options button down herewhich will take you to settings that you can adjust in Word.We'll see more of the Backstage view in a minute.For now, I want to open a file.So I'm going to to back to the Open optionhere in Backstage.Now if you are connected to a Microsoft account,then you'll be able to access your OneDrivewhich is cloud storage.So I could go to my OneDrive and maybe go intomy Documents folder on my OneDriveand open up a folder from here,and then I could double click on any of these filesto open them.

But I think it's more common to open filesdirectly from the hard drive on your computer.And for that, you're going to click on this optionthat says Browse.And now I can browse through the hard drive on my computer.So I'm going to go to my Desktop to the Exercise Fileswhich I have for this course,and then I can just double click on any of these filesto open it up.So now I've got a document open,and we're in the main document window.Now the first thing that I want you to be aware ofwhen you're working on a document like thisis the ribbon.

That's this row all the way up hereat the top of the screen.And the ribbon has lots of buttons for different commandsthat you might use in Word,and we're going to use a lot of them in this course.You can do things like change the font of your text,change the size,change the formatting to make it bold or underlined,change your paragraph alignment,use styles, lots of stuff like that.But I'm only seeing a fraction of the tools that we havein Word because I'm only looking at one ribbon.I want you to look up at the top of the ribbon.

I see these words Home, Insert, Design,Layout, and so on.So I'm currently in the Home ribbon.If I click on one of these other words,it switches me to a different ribbon.So now I'm in the Insert ribbonand I have completely different options here.I can go to the Layout ribbon,and I have other options entirely.So you might want to flip through the different ribbonsand see the options that you have, and as we go throughthis course, we're going to be going intodifferent ribbons and looking at different options.But the very first button in the ribbons is differentfrom the others,That's the File button.

And the File button takes you to the Backstage view.And now we do have all of the Backstage optionsbecause I currently have a file open.In addition to the options for creating a new fileor opening an existing file, I can see informationfor the file that I'm currently on,that's because Info is active,but I also have options to Print my fileor Share it, or Close it when I'm finished.But I just want to get out of the Backstage viewand go back to my main document editing workspace.

So to leave the Backstage view, all I need to do isclick on this Back button up in the top left,and I'm back in my document.All right, so we were talking about the ribbon,and I think the Home ribbon is where you're goingto spend most of your time,so I'm going to click on Home to go back to the Home ribbon.Above the ribbon is an area that we callthe Quick Access toolbar.Here you have quick access to some very common controls.There's a shortcut right here to Save your file.That's this button that looks like an old style floppy disk.

This way you can save changes to your documentwithout going to the Backstage view.There's also an Undo button and a Redo button here as well.Now of course, the main part of the windowis where you'll be working on your document.And we're going to be covering the core functionalityof writing and formatting text in another movie,so I'm going to skip this for now.Now down at the bottom of the window,there's a toolbar and this will give you informationabout your document, like how many pagesare in your document,how many words are in your document, and so on.

We've got a couple different view options here,and then you've got this zoom slider.So if your document is too big on the screenor too small, you can grab this slider,and you can zoom out to make it smaller,or you could move it up to zoom in to get closer.But I find it's much easier to click on the percentageright next to the slider,and here I can choose a preset percentageor I could type something in.So maybe I want to set this to 125%and hit OK, and I think that's a good sizefor my document on this screen.

So those are the core elements of the Word interface.You do not have to be intimately familiarwith all of the options in the ribbons,but I do want you to know how to work with the ribbonsin general and I want you to be familiar withthe Welcome screen and the Backstage view.And with that, you're in a good position to follow methrough the rest of the course.

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11/16/2015

Learn how to get up and running with Microsoft Word 2016, the world's most popular word-processing software. This short course for novice Word users will introduce the Word interface and explain how to open, save, and create documents and templates. The course then explores basic formatting and adding images, tables, and charts as well as working with styles, creating long documents, and collaborating with Track Changes.